"As we stand here in 2010 there is no such thing as a fundamentalist movement."

Good stuff Dave. Thank you. We had already concluded much the same in regard to the “Biblical” Counseling Movement.

I think this observation is helpful. And the paragraphs explaining it…

[Doran] IOW, it is more like a faux call to fundamentalist unity and really a call to support whatever entity is issuing the call. And the same thing can be done by those who are constantly in attack mode on fundamentalism, i.e., they aren’t really interested in some broad based unity like historic fundamentalism, but are after some more narrow theological or ministerial agenda.

Seems to me this is an exercise in missing the point…

But why even bother trying to argue for something larger than that which is a pipe dream?

We don’t have to argue for something larger. The very fact that he wrote the post highlights the point that the movement does exist. You can argue that it’s not unified and you can argue that it never will be, but it does exist.

His suggestion that we “work with the guys [we] do agree with” is great, but it is the nature of humanity that this will eventually become a movement or a sub-movement. Classifying things is what we humans do.

Of course focusing on the existence of a movement is pointless. Trying to escape the existence of a movement is also pointless.

Pimo Beach is cold but it should warm up. 8-)

Restore the local assembly to the center where God intended it to be. When your local assembly engages in Great Commission work outside its walls, find some folks you agree with and get busy doing it. Unity is built on agreement about the truth, not by politics.

Amen..and…

As far as I’m concerned, you can have the movements. I want friends and ministry partners who agree on what the Bible teaches about itself, the gospel, the nature and mission of the church, and separation. Time to move along.

…AMEN

However…the “rub” is in the word “separation.” I agree that it should be included…however how we flesh that out will still keep good men apart.
So, I’d like to pose a question…what issues would keep you from working with another church? Since the list could be endless, let me ask a few specifics…
-Music?
-Versions?
-Dress?
-Pews vs. chairs?
-Others?

Finally someone said the obvious! The movement is gone. There is just a remnant of the old alliances. Let each on be convinced in his own mind and stop judging one another already. If you don’t like the guys we invite to our church don’t come when we invite you and don’t invite us. If I get offended over that then I need to grow up mentally and spiritually. We cannot make ourselves accountable to others whose priorities are vastly different from ours. If you think Calvinism=Augustinianism=Romanism=Satanism then you are going to get appoplectic if I talk too much about sovereign grace! So, we aren’t going to do too well working together to share the gospel. So why can’t we work with others who are on the same page and just move on. I am happy to let you or whoever have their high-power, bus-driven, revival meetings as long as they aren’t at my church and as long as they aren’t looking down on us and trash talking us.
I well remember the “Bowl of Blood” Bible Conference at BJU. I was 15 and I could not figure out why Jones and Paisley had their knickers in a twist about the bowl. Then I found out what MacArthur said. I still to this day can’t figure it out! Let other people work for the Kingdom. Ground your students, interns and others you are mentoring, in the Word and warn them of what is going on but stop trying to be the Holy Spirit to them.
Romans 14:4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

[Jamie Hart] So, I’d like to pose a question…what issues would keep you from working with another church? Since the list could be endless, let me ask a few specifics…
-Pews vs. chairs?

Jamie,
You are not serious, are you??

Hmmm, now that I think about it…maybe there is something to this.

I wonder if we could even find an old fundamentalist who might be willing to separate over padded pews versus the “pure” unpadded kind. Or maybe even an old-timer whose conscience binds him to go back one step further to the old “boxed” pews with the gate at the end of the row. 8-)

I think we have the basis for some great church fights here!! :bigsmile: :tired:

Dave,

Nice post. Two responses:

1. I think I agree with you here in every point. But my point would be so do many of the conservative evangelicals. We just had a conference where we stressed koinonia over movements.

2. If you are going to talk about us why not talk to us, with us…like over here in SI land? I’m sure the guys would let you have an account. I know I would. You seem distant Dave. We miss you. At least I do.

Shalom & Straight Ahead!

jt

This doesn’t make sense…

[Aaron Blumer] I think this observation is helpful. And the paragraphs explaining it…

[Doran] IOW, it is more like a faux call to fundamentalist unity and really a call to support whatever entity is issuing the call. And the same thing can be done by those who are constantly in attack mode on fundamentalism, i.e., they aren’t really interested in some broad based unity like historic fundamentalism, but are after some more narrow theological or ministerial agenda.

Who is “issuing the call”?

Which institutions are calling people to fundamentalist unity?

Which of the colleges?
Which of the mission boards?
Which of the fellowships?

Dave suggested each of these, but I don’t hear any call for “fundamentalist unity” coming from these sources. I hear a lot of calls from individuals to move closer to conservative evangelicals and corresponding concerns from individuals who think that is a bad idea.

Aside from Doran and Bauder, which fundamentalist college and seminary presidents are speaking to this issue at all?

Aside from Doran, which fundamentalist mission board leaders are speaking to this issue at all?

And really, which leaders of fellowships are calling for some kind of fundamentalist unity beyond their own memberships? Which of them are saying if fundamentalism fails, their fellowship will fail?

In other words, I don’t get Dave’s paragraph at all. It doesn’t make sense.

[Paul J. Scharf]

[Jamie Hart] So, I’d like to pose a question…what issues would keep you from working with another church? Since the list could be endless, let me ask a few specifics…
-Pews vs. chairs?

Jamie,
You are not serious, are you??

Sort of.
I could have added allows food/does not allow food in the “sanctuary.” (That one nearly cost me my ministry) I’m just curious about where lines are drawn and why.

[Don Johnson] This doesn’t make sense…

[Aaron Blumer] I think this observation is helpful. And the paragraphs explaining it…

[Doran] IOW, it is more like a faux call to fundamentalist unity and really a call to support whatever entity is issuing the call. And the same thing can be done by those who are constantly in attack mode on fundamentalism, i.e., they aren’t really interested in some broad based unity like historic fundamentalism, but are after some more narrow theological or ministerial agenda.

Who is “issuing the call”?

Which institutions are calling people to fundamentalist unity?

Which of the colleges?
Which of the mission boards?
Which of the fellowships?

Actually, I think Doran is assuming—correctly, IMO—that we know who these folks are. Even in my neck of the woods I do read the occasional accusation that “Folks who believe X are not true Fundamentalists” which is close cousin to “Those of us who do believe it are the true ones carrying the movement forward.”
In fact Thou Shalt Keep Them (in the front page article this AM) does this several times in the footnotes.

It is still going on. And last year we had quite a stir over a guy basically asserting that only non-Calvinists represented true Fundamentalism and that the real fundies need to be more effective in keeping folks from going there (I’m very loosely paraphrasing)— at a regional FBFI meeting.

He’s not imagining this, though my impression is that more of it was going on in the late 80’s than today.

[Jason] We don’t have to argue for something larger. The very fact that he wrote the post highlights the point that the movement does exist. You can argue that it’s not unified and you can argue that it never will be, but it does exist.
His suggestion that we “work with the guys [we] do agree with” is great, but it is the nature of humanity that this will eventually become a movement or a sub-movement. Classifying things is what we humans do.
Of course focusing on the existence of a movement is pointless. Trying to escape the existence of a movement is also pointless.

Interesting observation, Jason. I think you might be right. It’s interesting that though Bauder has declared the movement dead several times already as well, he has a “Fundamentalism Worth Saving Conference” scheduled for next year.
I think Bauder & Doran are just tired to the bone of all the folks to their far right and “the movement is dead” is a way of saying, “let’s start something else… something we don’t really want to call a movement.” This may be more true of Bauder than of Doran. Dave seems to truly not care if there is anything bigger. I’m not so sure about Kevin. But I’m just guessing, of course.

[Aaron Blumer]
Actually, I think Doran is assuming—correctly, IMO—that we know who these folks are. Even in my neck of the woods I do read the occasional accusation that “Folks who believe X are not true Fundamentalists” which is close cousin to “Those of us who do believe it are the true ones carrying the movement forward.”

How is “folks who believe X are not true fundamentalists” any kind of call for Unity, faux or otherwise?

These are two different statements.

[Don Johnson]

[Aaron Blumer]
Actually, I think Doran is assuming—correctly, IMO—that we know who these folks are. Even in my neck of the woods I do read the occasional accusation that “Folks who believe X are not true Fundamentalists” which is close cousin to “Those of us who do believe it are the true ones carrying the movement forward.”

How is “folks who believe X are not true fundamentalists” any kind of call for Unity, faux or otherwise?

These are two different statements.

If I understand Aaron correctly, he’s saying it’s a call for all those who believe in X to rally around the X cause against those who do not. It’s unity for the X-believers.

[Jamie Hart] If I understand Aaron correctly, he’s saying it’s a call for all those who believe in X to rally around the X cause against those who do not. It’s unity for the X-believers.

Yeah, I think Fundamentalists are X-men also.

But, to get back to Dave’s article, he is saying that the “faux call to fundamentalist unity”is “really a call to support whatever entity is issuing the call.”

And I am asking, what entities are making that faux call?

Dave mentioned mission boards, educational institutions, and fellowships. I can see no names like me making faux calls, I do it all the time. But which entities are doing that? Which leaders in these types of institutions within Fundamentalism are actively engaged in this debate other than Dave Doran and Kevin Bauder? The rest of them are silent.

So far.

Responding to Jason above:

“His suggestion that we “work with the guys [we] do agree with” is great, but it is the nature of humanity that this will eventually become a movement or a sub-movement. Classifying things is what we humans do.”

A junior high marching band is working with people who attend the same junior high school, play music, are members of the same extracurricular organization, agree to and abide by that organization’s rules, and regularly meet for practice and performance. So, does that constitute a movement? Were several such bands to join together, i.e. for the purposes of a parade, is that a movement? Or what if the Bible-believing Christians in those bands were to get together for prayer and Bible study? Does it become a movement then? Or would it require a concerted effort (by students themselves or adults representing churches and ministries) to recruit and organize Christian junior high band members into prayer, Bible study and evangelism groups? THEN it would qualify as a movement. Prior to that, it really is just a marching band, or a subset of a marching band.

The fact is that the fundamentalist movement began as a reaction to theological liberalism subversively infiltrating major denominations. (Also, the movement was necessary because of the existence of “denominationalism” in the first place, hence the author’s call to return to the importance of the local assembly, and allowing local assemblies to fellowship and cooperate with whoever the Lord leads them to.) Once A) the theological liberals were exposed with their beliefs and agenda known and B) they succeeded in taking over a number of denominations and institutions, there were two primary reactions by professed Bible-believers. Evangelicals primarily decided to remain in the affected denominations and institutions to try to preserve, reform, and be represented in them, and when necessary created their own institutions. Fundamentalists walked out and created their own denominations and institutions. And so the old mostly liberal institutions and the newer evangelical and fundamentalist institutions, or movements if you will, developed along their own lines, fighting their own battles (which were quite often and probably predominantly internal).

But over time, there have been so many changes to the three basic camps that none retain much semblance to their original forms and there are also no hard dividing lines between the three. It is difficult to point out the dividing line between liberalism and evangelicalism, especially since so many evangelicals are in liberal institutions, and so many evangelical institutions allow and embrace liberals. And yes, it is difficult to point out the dividing line between fundamentalists and evangelicals for similar reasons. But the bottom line is clear: with the theological liberal cat out of the bag and being a fixture in the western religious landscape, and with evangelicals and fundamentalists having long maintained their own respective denominations and institutions, and with the future of all three influenced by a decline in the percentage of professed Christians in the west, if there is a fundamentalist (or for that matter evangelical) movement, exactly where does it want to take us?

Movements don’t exist simply because groups of like-minded people gather together. That’s not a movement but merely an assocation. A movement is an association with a purpose, a goal that they are working for. Occasionally the goal is internal, but usually the goal is external … attempting to lead or influence others. The original fundamentalists had the primary goal of preserving Biblical Christianity from theological liberalism. That was a movement, and it was largely successful, though the credit for its success rests not with fundamentalists or fundamentalism but with Jesus Christ Himself. We should NEVER lose sight of that fact. But with that battle won, there are now almost as many goals and agendas in fundamentalism as there are fundamentalists.

Because the fundamentalist movement was created out of a passionate impulse to fight, even though the original battle is long over, the pugilistic reactionary tendencies remain. Fights must continue even if no one knows what the terms, stakes, goals or end games are, and if no enemy exists one must be created. An example of this is the furor over “Lordship salvation”, being treated as some new marginal heresy when the Donatists were saying many of the same things way back in the 4th century, to speak nothing of the Anabaptists and Moravians, and advocated by such prominent figures as Charles Spurgeon and George Whitefield. But because of the need to declare war and promote a new round of separations based on it, these folks are willing to deny basic church history, including the fact that the “Lordship salvation” types were the forerunners of the fundamentalist movement to begin with (i.e. Spurgeon’s battles with the theological liberals of his day and the Moravians who had separated from their state church). In that sense, people who are still trying to keep the fundamentalist “movement” going are very similar to those trying to keep the civil rights movement going. Jim Crow is long gone, yet their various leaders and organizations keep speaking of enemies and threats instead of adapting to a long changed environment.

Fundamentalists exposed the liberal Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopals etc., left them behind in an organized exit, and then went on to form their own organizations devoted to preserving and passing down the faith long ago. Other than maintaining (which yes, does include defending!) those institutions (churches, seminaries, associations, denominations, publishing houses, etc.) and working to move them ever closer to the Biblical ideal, what more was there and is there to do? And at what point do we have to stand back and acknowledge that even though the universal church is built by God and will last forever, institutions made by Christians are still human institutions and therefore inevitably won’t? The failure to recognize that last issue is a central error of Catholicism. Catholics hold that their human institution is ordained and empowered by God to last forever. Why should Protestants continue in that error by pretending as if our individual churches, denominations, seminaries, assocations, conventions, revivals, movements etc. should continue past their time of need and usefulness? Is it because we wish them to do God’s work, or we want them to exist for our own sakes and do ours?

We even saw elements of this in the New Testament. There was the original, earliest churches in Acts that were more or less directly led by apostles (i.e. the Jerusalem church) but as the apostles scattered and died and error and confusion began to creep in, the so-called catholic and pastoral epistles were needed to create a new model for a new phase. (That is the primary error of the Pentecostal and other “restorationist” movements which ignores that real theological and institutional developments occured outside the Acts narrative, and that those developments were needed.) So if there was a time and need to move and develop from what Luke described in Acts to the Corinthian and Timothy epistles, why resist the very real possibility that in the post-Christian, post-modern west it’s time for fundamentalists to develop as well?

Maybe 25 years ago, it would have been useful for a fundamentalist preacher to stand up in the pulpit and declare that the society at large has rejected any semblance of respect for the church, the authority of scripture and fear of God. That was then. Now, according to any number of religion surveys, huge swaths of self-described conservative Bible-based Christians have embraced religious pluralism, support moral relativism, reject the inerrancy and authority of scripture, are experimenting with subjective experiential individual spirituality, and do not believe in a literal hell/lake of fire. Among other things, that’s why Billy Graham can proclaim that he is no longer sure that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven in a major magazine with no repercussions whatsoever. It’s why George W. Bush was able to claim that Muslims and Christians worship the same God and that the Bible was a good moral and ethical book but not literally true and still be regarded by so tens of millions of conservative Christians as one of their own, on their side, and that he actually did receive instructions from God to invade Iraq. And it’s why Rick Warren is able to promote yoga, give church growth and pastoral training programs to Mormons, Jews and Catholics, and hang out with the who’s who of the emergent church (now there’s a movement!) without his standing with the Southern Baptist Convention ever challenged.

So if there is a “movement” among fundamentalists, conservative evangelicals or whatever other name that we can come up with, it should concern preparing those who will come after us for a future in this country where we may well be small in number, on the margins of society and discriminated against, which happens to be the plight of Christians in many of the lands that we send missionaries to. It needs to prepare us for a future where America itself is a mission field for Christians from third world countries and other places, and those Christians are just as important to defining and defending orthodoxy as we are (with Nigeria’s Peter Akinola and his Convocation of Anglicans in North America being an example). Unless you are a premillennial dispensationalist who believes that the rapture will occur before that situation transpires, that is where the Christian “movement” in America and in the west in general is headed. Fundamentalists (and conservative evangelicals) will either be a part of it or die out.

The irony is that conservative evangelicals may be better suited to meet this future than fundamentalists are. Despite the stance that they represent being separate from erroneous Christian movements and (of course) the world, the truth is that fundamentalism in its current form is based on, assumes and requires a culture that is basically Christian, that is a society where Christians are large in number, have some wealth and influence, and our beliefs largely respected if not accepted. Dependent as it is on a network of institutions that require a great deal of resources and professional expertise to manage (i.e. large churches with full time pastors that rely on tax exempt status as well as seminaries and Bible colleges whose students receive federal financial aid) and a large number of supporters, it is difficult to imagine fundamentalism in an America where Christianity is marginalized. It would only take a law requiring churches and schools to hire homosexuals as a condition of retaining their tax-exempt status to wreak havoc on American fundamentalism. Thus, it may be that conservative evangelicals are better positioned because A) they don’t deny the extent to which they are a part of and reflect the larger culture to begin with and B) many of them are marginalized within their own denominations and institutions already.

So please, heed the words of Doran and stop holding onto notions of the fundamentalist movement, a movement which long ago accomplished its goals and whose time and era is past. Instead, be a fundamentalist who will be prepared to be part of the next movement, which has already started whether one wishes to acknowledge it or not.